Experience at Sea funding is justified

On July 16 the Bangor Daily News featured an article on the Experience at Sea program that Community Health and Counseling Services and several partners, including the Department of Human Services implemented last year. This innovative program served you men from 17-21 who were already receiving some form of state-sponsored assistance. The Experience at Sea program was an unmitigated success. Every participant developed great knowledge of the sea and is eligible to sit for his Able Bodied Seaman’s test. Of the nine who finished, five are in college, one is on a schooner and hopes to attend Maine Maritime Academy, and the other three are working. The BDN editorial of the same day accurately described the program’s achievements and its cost effectiveness. The news article quoted a spokesman for DHS, Newell Auger, who unfortunately offered some comments that were not entirely accurate.

First, Auger asserted that the program cost $100,000 per youth. That is incorrect. Nine young men finished the program, but 12 young men began the program. Auger has apportioned all the costs, even for those who did not finish the program, against the nine. That is inconsistent with DHS analysis for similar residential placements, such as group homes, where the costs are apportioned against each youth whether that youth remains in the group home for the entire period or not.

The true measure of the program’s cost is its daily rate. The total cost of the Experience at Sea program was $263 per youth, per day. Costs for group homes, to which each of these youth would otherwise have been destined, range between $250 and $300 per youth, per day.

Second, the program served young adults who reside in residential placements for which DHS makes payment. Failing to authorize the Experience at Sea program for the next group of young adults in no way prevents DHS from expending these funds anyway. They will simply be supported in land-based facilities rather than on the sea. These young adults will be denied the unique experience this program offered and DHS will likely pay more for each of them, rather than less.

Third, Mr. Auger’s figure for the cost of the Experience at Sea program to the Department of Education of $150,000 is inaccurate. The true figure is $144,000. To date, the DOE has not yet provided funding to this project. We are still waiting to be reimbursed for educational services rendered. Again, some of the participants would have been eligible for DOE funding whether they were on land or sea.

We at CHCS understand the need for DHS to be fiscally responsible in the face of the state’s budget deficit. Eliminating the Experience at Sea program, however, will not save DHS or the state a dime. It will succeed only in confining the next group of young adults to land and depriving them and their fellow citizens a program which was a model of state and private innovation and cooperation and which in its brief life established a record of success that few, if any, group homes can match.

Timothy C. Woodcock is president of the Community Health and Counseling Services board of directors.